The purpose of this course is to summarize new directions in Chinese history and social science produced by the creation and analysis of big historical datasets based on newly opened Chinese archival holdings, and to organize this knowledge in a framework that encourages learning about China in comparative perspective.
Our course demonstrates how a new scholarship of discovery is redefining what is singular about modern China and modern Chinese history. Current understandings of human history and social theory are based largely on Western experience or on non-Western experience seen through a Western lens. This course offers alternative perspectives derived from Chinese experience over the last three centuries. We present specific case studies of this new scholarship of discovery divided into two stand-alone parts, which means that students can take any part without prior or subsequent attendance of the other part.
Part 1 (https://www.coursera.org/learn/understanding-china-history-part-1) focuses on comparative inequality and opportunity and addresses two related questions ‘Who rises to the top?’ and ‘Who gets what?’.
Part 2 (this course) turns to an arguably even more important question ‘Who are we?’ as seen through the framework of comparative population behavior - mortality, marriage, and reproduction – and their interaction with economic conditions and human values. We do so because mortality and reproduction are fundamental and universal, because they differ historically just as radically between China and the West as patterns of inequality and opportunity, and because these differences demonstrate the mutability of human behavior and values.
Course Overview video: https://youtu.be/dzUPRyJ4ETk

Enseigné par

James Z. Lee

Dean and Chair Professor of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences

Transcription

[MUSIC] Welcome to Understanding China, 1700-2000. A Data Analytic Approach. Part Two, section 14: Alternative Marriage Forms. So let's look a little more closely at polygyny and other alternative Chinese marriage forms. Because the desire for marriage was so strong in China historically, exacerbated no doubt by the large number of missing females that we discussed two sections ago. Though we can identify a variety forms of marriage in historical China, several of which persist to the present. First in addition to monogamous marriage, there was polygynous marriage, the marriage of one man to more than one wife. There was little daughter in law marriage, where the woman moved in to the man's family not at marriage, but rather at infancy. Was brought up by her in-laws and then only married her husband when she reached her majority years later. Uxorilocal marriage or rather then the woman marrying and moving into the man's family, the man marries and then moves into the woman's family and often even changes his family name. And then there was most unusually, a form of marriage called Levirate where a man inherits his wife from a deceased, often older relative, usually an older brother or a father. Not, of course, marrying his biological mother but rather marrying his step-mother. And, indeed, some of the most famous romances historically have been between a stepson, and a stepmother. So, polygyny. Now polygyny was, in fact, relatively uncommon. It was largely an elite behavior, and even among elite populations, it was not necessarily the most common form of marriage. Among the Qing nobility, although only one-third actually ever married polygynous. And among the elite, so the genealogical populations documented in a variety of Chinese genealogies only 10% of their marriages were polygynous. By contrast if we were to look at say rural peasant populations. Say, 4,000 marriages among peasants in 18th and 19th Century Liaoning in northeast China. The polygyny rates were only one per thousand. And if we were to look in early 20th-Century Taiwan, the polygyny rates were only slightly higher. So, since peasants accounted for over 90% of the population of China until the early twentieth-century. It's unlikely that, nationally, more than 1 or 2 percent of male marriages were in fact polygynous. Moreover, male behavior in China within polygynous marriages was hardly the same as, say, western polygynous marriages. Now in the west of course, in addition to the sort of unusual forms of polygyny, say in the state of Utah, the United States. Given the increasing prevalence of divorce, many monogamous marriages in some ways actually resemble serial polygyny. That is a man may have several wives, just not at the same time. Similarly in China, since divorce was largely absent in historical China, and for that matter most of 20th century China. Polygynous Chinese marital behavior actually resembles serial monogamy in the sense that many polygynous men apparently had monogamous, or near monogamous relations, regardless of the number of their wives. The Qing nobility whose fertility is illustrated in the accompanying chart. For example, practice polygyny without really increasing their marital relations. And, as a result, adding one wife increased male fertility by only one child. But so in other words, it hardly increased the number of sexually active marital partners and barely increased the number of children. Overall monogamous Qing nobles who survived to age 45 and had on average 3 wives, had on average only five children, while polygynous nobles who survived to age 45 had on average only seven children. The Western equivalents are eight to ten children from monogamous wives, 15 to 25 children from polygynous men, double the marital passion of Chinese polygynous marriages. So for instance, each Mormon husband who survived to age 45 had on average 24.6 children before 1820, 21.2 children in the early 19th century, 18 children in the mid 19th century, contrasted with seven children in the Ching nobility. Far more common, among poor people at least and throughout China, than polygyny, was little-daughter-in-law marriage. So, where a woman is adapted as a child normally before the age of ten and brought up as a future daughter in-law. Such marriages were particularly popular in poor areas, save for example, in Taiwan where, in the early 20th century, they accounted for almost half of all marriages. And even today, such little daughter in law marriages remain common. Although evidence is scattered and estimates vary from 1 to 10% depending on specific periods and regions. Similarly, uxorilocal marriage, the marriage of a man into the woman's family was relatively common in the past. And even in the 1960s or the 1990s persists in China today with estimates of 5 to 8 percent of all marriages in rural areas, 7 to 10 percent of all marriages in urban areas in China in the late 20th century being youth or a local. And in fact, my great, great grandfather, four generations ago, married uxorilocally and changed his family name to Lee. Such son-in-law adoption arrangements, of course, varied from. But generally, as in the case of my great grandfather, our local men shifted their allegiance from their biological family to their new social family through marriage. And at the same time, quite often they did so because of the incentive of just as women did of marrying up. So you have an accompanying phenomenon of what is called female hypergamy and male hypergamy. That is, the use of marriage to also achieve upward social mobility. While there are no quantitative studies or statistics of levirate marriage, there are many documented examples. And although this form of marriage was repeatedly prohibited it persists particularly among such non-Han populations as Manchus and Mongols. And while both levirate and little daughter in law marriages are now illegal because of their stressful marital relations. And considered exploitation of women, they continue to be practiced at least among poor peasants even today in contemporary China. So as we can see, and as Mencius said in his famous statement, of all unfilial deeds, none is more serious than the failure to produce male descendants. Chinese marriage remains, the desire for marriage remains unusually strong. The practice of marriage was unusually universal and indeed as I said at the beginning of this section, one of the ironies of our understanding who we are. Is that the most conservative population. The population which seems to believe the most in the importance of marriage throughout the whole world today is the People's Republic of China. [MUSIC]